A New Opn For a New Year

For the new
year, Oticon has released a major upgrade of its line of Opn hearing aids. The
rollout will be in March.

When the Opn
was introduced in 2016 the company stated its goal was to allow people with
hearing loss to understand speech, in any sound environment, “on par with people with normal hearing.” The
second generation of the Opn gets closer to that goal.

The first wave
of improvement is in baseline performance. According to benchmark testing
carried out by Oticon, the Opn S will improve performance over the
first-generation Opn by providing:

A 10 percent expansion in memory recall

A 15 percent betterment of speech understanding

A 10 percent curtailment in listening effort

These
performance metrics are based on the BrainHearing technology that Oticon has
developed over the past decade.

The other
major performance improvement is in ridding users of feedback issues. Though
all hearing aids have improved in this area in recent years, there are still
occasional circumstances that bring on the high-pitched annoyance of feedback.
The “new” Opn has incorporated superior feedback canceling in order to make
feedback an even rarer occurrence.

There are also
a couple of new features. The OpenSound Booster that is now part of the Oticon
On App will allow not only direct wireless linking with an iPhone or Android
smartphone, but will also allow these devices to be incorporated into the Opn
S’s functions as a way to boost performance, especially in noisy environments.

Another new
option is the first rechargeable Opn. The lithium-ion battery will be able to
take a charge overnight and then provide a full day’s use.